The Secret Sauce

Discover how Scottish entrepreneur Ross Mackay, Co-Founder and CEO of Daring Foods is working to remove chicken from our food system with great tasting plant-based alternatives - and how he's picked up . 

In the episode

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿The early days growing as a kid in Glasgow

🏃‍♂️ Going from an out of shape teenager to obsessed by health and fitness

🌱Why he switched to plant-based and how it affects his athletics

👕 His earliest venture - a clothing label based in Dubai

❤️ The need for genuine passion for long term success of a startup

💸How to raise funding for your plant-based startup

🛫Why he moved from Glasgow (Scotland) to LA (USA)

📈A look into hyper growth: From 2 to 30+ people

Host Arman Anaturk (@ArmanAnaturk) has Sorosh Tavakoli (@soroshtavakoli) on the pod this week:

Sorosh is the classic immigrant entrepreneur story.
- His family had to leave his home country of Iran due to the Iran/Iraq war at the time.
- Moves to a smallish town in Sweden (Uppsala) and tries to fit in
- Gets really into software / tech at the height of the dot com boom
- Builds and sells his first website (a fan page for Method Man) at age 14
- Goes on to study media technology where his classmates include soon to be founders of Spotify, SoundCloud & Prezi
- Decides he never wants to work for anyone
- Gets the idea for a media advertising company whilst in the shower
- Builds the business to 100 people across 8 cities
- Sells this business for an estimated $75M
- Makes his family proud
- Moves to NYTakes some time to learn about impact businesses & climate change
- Tries launching a duckweed business. Fails
- Now is creating the future of great tasting plant-based cheese together with his co-founder Anja and their team of scientist at Stockeld Dreamery

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Editing thanks to Annabelle Buckland

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is David Benzaquen, consultant and investor for plant-based food companies. David Benzaquen is one of the world’s leading experts in the plant-based food industry, and the founder of Mission: Plant, a holding company which aims to advance the plant-based foods industry with stratetgc investments and consulting services.

Prior to founding Mission: Plant, David spent nearly a decade leading a corporate strategy consulting firm for plant-based consumer products and founded one of the first plant-based seafood companies. David invests in, and advises, early-stage, plant-based, FMCG businesses.

He and his companies have been profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Wired, Inc, CNN and more.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is Daniel Skavén Ruben, consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Food team, advisor and investor to multiple startups across Europe, Africa and the US and writer of the food tech weekly newsletter. We chat about Daniel's unplanned path into the foodtech industry, why he's so excited about the future of this space, his prediction on what's going to be big in 2021 and beyond, as well as his ethos to being an advisor and investor. 

Discussion

• From law to freelance journalist, the entertainment industry to the Trade council - Daniel's past before food and what he's learned along the way
• How Daniel ended up at the Rockefeller food foundation
• A brief history of our food system, progress and setbacks we've made in the past 100 years
• The main challenges we need to tackle to make a more nutritious, sustainable food system for all
• The businesses across food and Ag that Daniels hopeful on
• Companies in Daniels investment/advisory portfolio
• Being an advisor and what that means
• What startups should look for in an advisor and when

Mentioned in the podcast:

• Daniels LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielskavenruben/
• Daniels foodtech weekly newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/foodtechweekly
• Daniels interview on Warp news podcast: https://www.warpnews.org/food-tech/food-tech-with-daniel-s-ruben/

Today's guest at the Secret Sauce is Leif Langenskiöld, founder & CEO of the vitamin water company Focus Water. 

From bio scientist to pioneer investor and entrepreneur: Interview with Ryan Bethencourt, Founder & CEO, Wild Earth. 

Biologist Turned Serial Entrepreneur: Riana Lynn, Founder & CEO, Journey Foods. Riana has launched, grown, scaled and sold several companies in the food tech space, with a decade of experience in the industry - culminating in her current role as Founder & CEO of Journey foods - better feeding the growing 8 billion population

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is with Fengru Lin, co-founder of Turtle Tree Labs. Turtle Tree Labs are the first company in the world producing real, whole milk from cell cultivation — which opens the door for safer, healthier and customized dairy products that can be produced with far fewer natural resources and without the need for animals.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is with Jose Amado-Blanco, co-founder of the organic baby food company Yamo. when you think of three 20-something childless men, baby food perhaps isn’t the first business venture that would spring to mind. But for José and his co-founders Tobias and Luca, the opportunity was clear.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is with Niclas Luthman, founder of NICK'S. Niclas was diagnosed as pre-diabetic but he could never kick his habit for sweet treats - from snacks, and chocolates to sodas and ice cream - so he instead started his own company reinventing the snacks industry with healthier and more sustainable options that taste better than what’s on the supermarket shelves.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is with Daniel Protz, founder and CEO of FlavorWiki. Daniel Protz is an experienced executive, entrepreneur, and former competitive athlete. During the episode, we chatted with Daniel about the startup ecosystem in the US vs Switzerland, how DTC disrupted traditional retail and big FMCGs, and why ultimately, consumers are the ones losing out.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is with Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, CEO of Redefine Meat: the Israeli startup working towards 3D printing beef out of plant-based ingredients. Growing up, Eshchar was no stranger to the day-to-day realities of meat production and consumption. But four years ago, Eshchar became a father for the first time, which dramatically changed the way he thought about meat.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is Mohamed Chahin, co-founder of the food delivery platform eatclever. Mohamed is a second-generation refugee whos parents immigrating from Lebanon to a small village in Northern Germany. This sparked him to take an alternate path, one that led him to drop-out of university, move to Berlin and work on a startup idea that he and his friends came up with over a hackathon weekend.

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is Saasha Celestial-One, co-founder of the sharing app OLIO. Giving things of value a second chance is part of Saasha’s DNA. Growing up in sleepy Iowa, her hippy entrepreneur parents would take her on dumpster-diving missions, looking for items that could be reused or repaired and sold on or food that could be salvaged. 

Today's guest at The Secret Sauce is Manuel E. Gonzalez An entrepreneur turned Rabobank corporate banker turned VC at RIFF Ventures During our chat, Manuel shares more about his personal journey through food, finance, and tech and his views on the current and future investment landscape.

In July of 2019 , Veronica Fil, an ex-economist and her husband Shaun Quade, an award-winning chef decided to pack up everything, scrape together their life savings and move from sunny Melbourne, Australia to the US to launch their cheese-free cheese company Grounded Foods.